Transit mess was years in the making— now we must all chip in to fix it

Joe Lhota is the right leader for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He knows finance, politics and how to manage large organizations.

But, as recently departed Knicks President Phil Jackson demonstrated, success requires a strong team, not just a great man.

The MTA’s problems did not occur overnight. The decline of our subways took a long time to develop and will take a long time to cure. More than 20 years ago, then Gov. George Pataki put the MTA on the wrong path by abandoning the state’s commitment to mass transit. As the Citizens Budget Commission has documented, the agency’s flawed priorities for capital spending and its costly procurement procedures led to steady declines in routine maintenance and repair.

Unlike every other mass-transit system in the nation, the MTA operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If we are to modernize the system, riders must be prepared for short-term pain to assure long-term gains. That means closing down subway lines for weeks at a time—rather than just for six-hour stints at night—to install advanced signal technologies.

New funding sources are vital; we cannot just add to the MTA’s debt, which is financed by bridge and tunnel tolls and subway fares. This will require a “no fight” zone between the governor and the mayor so they can harness the state Legislature—which has been missing in action—when it comes to mass transit. The business community must also be a serious advocate, rather than just a cheerleading squad.

New York City and the surrounding suburban counties are the sources of the state’s economic energy and demographic growth. Without the MTA, the city and the region will suffer, and upstate New York—which depends on downstate tax revenue—will continue to lose jobs and young people.

Whatever we do to raise funds, congestion pricing would not be sufficient. We need new sources of money from users of our streets and arteries, just as we get from MTA bridge and tunnel users today.

New York state’s gasoline tax of 44 cents per gallon should be raised by at least a nickel. It is 14 cents lower than Pennsylvania’s, 5.5 cents below Washington’s and just barely above Connecticut’s. Last year New Jersey raised its gasoline tax; now it is time for New York to take advantage of low gas prices and do the same.

New Yorkers pay a 50-cent surcharge on every taxi ride, a fee that goes to the MTA. We should impose a $2 fee on all for-hire car-service trips in the city and the suburbs. This could generate approximately $1 million a day (based on 500,000 daily trips), more than $350 million a year. And now that ride-share firms operate statewide, such a fee could aid upstate transit systems as well.

This is a rare moment; transportation and infrastructure are high on the public agenda. But mobilizing civic groups and public officials is essential. We cannot relax and assume that a new MTA chairman can work miracles without all New Yorkers contributing to the effort.

Mitchell L. Moss is the director of the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation.

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